It cannot be clearly determined whether this fiery judgment of which the Baptizer spoke was identified with the general judgment of the world. In any case it is a judgment on Israel. Repentance and baptism in the water of the Jordan were the sealing, the protection, the only rescue from the judgment by fire.
That makes it clear that the judgment announced by the Baptizer is not a pure imposition of punishment that offers no hope. The Baptizer’s concern, in his preaching of judgment, was precisely for the eschatological gathering of Israel, its repentance, its purification and sanctification, that is, its eschatological renewal. Israel is to bring “fruits” worthy of its repentance (Luke 3:8). And while the chaff is carried away by the wind, the wheat that remains will be gathered into a great granary (Luke 3:17).
And when will all that happen? Right away. The fiery judge already has the shovel in his hand, the axe is already laid to the root of the tree. This is about this generation in Israel.
So John the Baptizer’s eschatology is not only shaped by a worldview; it is decidedly about the people of God. And it is allied with an extreme expectation that it will follow immediately. The judgment is not coming someday, in future times. Nor is it coming in such a way that there is still time to delay anything. It is so near that there is no time left. The people of God must turn back immediately, and that means concretely that every individual must go to the Jordan, confess her or his sins publicly, be baptized in the Jordan, bear fruits of repentance, and so enter into the eschatological Israel.
Jesus and the Baptizer’s Preaching
This whole background must be considered if we are to understand Jesus’ eschatology,5 because Jesus obeyed the Baptizer’s preaching: he let himself be baptized by John in the Jordan. He may even have been the Baptizer’s disciple for a time (cf. John 3:22-30).6 We may assume, then, that he did not subtract anything from the Baptizer’s preaching of judgment. Nor did Jesus deviate from John the Baptizer’s expectation of the nearness of the end. He adopted the Baptizer’s overall eschatological horizon: there is no time left to wait or turn aside; now, today, every individual in Israel must act because God himself is acting now. Characteristic of Jesus’ expectation of the immediacy of the crisis are the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Plain:
Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the reign of God!
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh! (Luke 6:20-21)
This is about the poor, the hungry, the weeping in Israel, with whom Jesus was confronted every day. It is about the hopeless, the oppressed, the despairing among the people of God who followed Jesus. Jesus calls them blessed—not because their weeping, hunger, and poverty were of any value in themselves, but because God’s intervention is about to take place and because it is especially the hopeless who will experience God’s hope and salvation in a measure beyond all telling.
Jesus is not promising the miserable and the poor a better life after death, which certainly would have been possible within the overall framework of Jewish eschatology in his time. Instead he directs their eyes to the eschatological turning point that is now coming, that will affect all and change everything. He promises the poor and the beaten-down in particular that they will participate in the reign of God.
So Jesus is quite sure: this turning point is at hand. It will gather Israel anew, it will make possible a new society in which the poor have a share in the wealth of the land and the sorrowing participate in the rejoicing of the people of God.
So also with the imminent expectation—an expectation that reaches out toward the true, eschatological Israel under the rule of God. If the beatitudes had only been about consolation to be had after death Jesus would have emptied history of all value and made it nothing but a preliminary stage before the real thing. Then earthly history itself would no longer be the place where God’s salvation takes place.
However, the beatitudes also reveal a characteristic difference between Jesus and the Baptizer. The latter preached judgment—in the hope that a new Israel would arise, as if out of the fire. Jesus, in contrast, preached God’s salvation, the superfluity of the reign of God, which would only become judgment if Israel rejected it. The Baptizer relied on the weight of judgment, on terror of destruction. Jesus counts on the fascination of salvation, the joy of the reign of God. That is not an objection to John or a devaluing of the Baptizer. He was, according to Jesus, the greatest “among those born of woman” (Matt 11:11), that is, the “greatest human being of all.” And yet the very next thing Jesus says is that “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” With this paradox Jesus marks the breathtaking newness of what is now coming in him. And with this newness of the reign of God, Jesus’ concept of time has also shifted.
The Baptizer’s message is purely one of imminent expectation of the end. The axe is raised but has not yet fallen. But Jesus can say: salvation is here. So he really crossed a threshold that neither the Baptizer nor the whole of the Old Testament could or would cross.
The Proclamation in Mark 1:15
The gospels illustrate this especially in Jesus’ first appearance. That beginning is marked by the proclamation with which Mark summarizes Jesus’ preaching in the first chapter of his gospeclass="underline" “The time is fulfilled, and the reign of God has come near; [therefore] repent, and believe in the good news!” (Mark 1:15).
First of alclass="underline" what the evangelist summarizes here is proclamation. Jesus is not just talking about the reign of God. He is announcing it. He proclaims it, and later he has his disciples proclaim it in Israel (Matt 10:7). A proclamation always has a public character. What Jesus says about the reign of God is not apocalyptic secret knowledge but a public address to all Israel.
Furthermore, the beginning of this proclamation is precisely not a call to Israel to repent and believe the Gospel. Rather, repentance, turning back, is a consequence of the salvation that is already present: the time is fulfilled and the reign of God has come near. At the beginning, then, as throughout the Bible, is God’s action, not human action. God has taken the initiative. He alone gives the reign of God. It is the business of the people of God to respond. God’s action makes human action possible.
But the structure of Mark 1:15 shows us still more: biblical scholars have rethought many times what exactly “has come near” could mean. Is it that the reign of God is now closer than it was before in the dimension of linear time? That would inevitably mean that it is still not here. In that case the threshold to the new has not been crossed, and Jesus would have been no different, at least as far as his proclamation about the time of the reign of God was concerned, from the others who had preached “imminent expectation” in Israel.
The problem is solved if we take the first part of the proclamation seriously: “the time is fulfilled.” This opening clause gives the accent and clarifies the question of time. “The time is fulfilled,” of course, appears in the garments of solemn biblical language. But it means nothing different from our expression, “the time has come.” The biblical clothing of the expression indicates that this is about the promises of the prophets: now they are being fulfilled. Paul means the same thing when he writes: “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). The second clause, “the reign of God has come near,” following the groundbreaking opening statement, cannot mean that the time of fulfillment has not yet really arrived.